The Cleveland Cavaliers reportedly won’t be signing point guard Cameron Payne for the rest of this season.
Cameron Payne was signed to two 10-day contracts by the Cleveland Cavaliers, and showed some good things offensively when he came off the bench. Unfortunately for Payne, though, he reportedly won’t be signed for the rest of the year, per The Athletic’s Joe Vardon. Payne’s two 10-day deals ran out, and Cleveland wanted to keep a roster spot open.
In his time with the Cavaliers, Payne did a decent job as a bench contributor on the offensive end. In his nine games with the Cavs, he posted averages of 8.2 points on 59.6 percent true shooting, to go with 2.6 assists and 2.1 rebounds in 19.6 minutes per game, per NBA.com.
Payne made a solid showing for himself in The Land, and I would think he’ll get picked up somewhere in the NBA shortly in a reserve role, with a number of teams still with open roster spots. Payne believes that he played well for the Cavs, and has no hard feelings for Cleveland letting him go to keep a roster spot open, per Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor.
"“I feel really good about how I played here,” Payne told cleveland.com. “It’s understandable that they want the roster spot.”"
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Payne was reportedly initially signed to a 10-day deal to help lessen the burden on Cleveland rookie Collin Sexton with backup Matthew Dellavedova dealing with a foot sprain, and Payne still got valuable minutes on the floor even with Dellavedova coming back shortly thereafter.
The Cleveland Cavaliers should be busy in the coming weeks with roster moves, and as the aforementioned Fedor highlighted, a source told him the Cavs are “valuing roster flexibility heading into the trade deadline on Feb. 7.”
Giving Payne a long look with those two 10-day deals was a sensible decision by the Cavs, considering they might as well have given a young reserve ball-handler a chance to show what he could do in a full-rebuild scenario that isn’t currently about winning and is reportedly about developing young talent.
We’ll see what shakes out in the coming weeks for Cleveland in regards to that last roster spot.